


Leaving Sonora

by lyryk (s_k)



Series: A Nostalgist's Map of America [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-23
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2018-02-18 13:29:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2350085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/s_k/pseuds/lyryk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They talk mostly in monosyllables these days, and only when necessary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leaving Sonora

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ash48](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ash48/gifts), [colls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/colls/gifts).



> For two of the awesome people who bid on my offers at a fanworks auction. Inspired by [this book by Agha Shahid Ali](http://www.amazon.com/A-Nostalgists-Map-America-Poems/dp/039330924X).

‘Beer?’ Dean asks, tapping on Sam’s window from the outside. They’re at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, the road black and heat-warmed in front of them, sand flanking it on both sides as far as the eye can see.

Sam nods. They talk mostly in monosyllables these days, and only when necessary. He follows Dean into the small diner attached to the gas station, irritably pushing his damp hair out of his eyes. Dean glances back at him as he pushes the door open, but doesn’t say anything. A week ago, he’d have said, ‘Such a girl, Sammy,’ and ruffled Sam’s hair, pushed it back off his forehead, Sam’s sweat getting on his palm.

They order burgers and fries and drinks, each talking separately to the waiter, a boy with curly blond hair in a striped apron stained with mustard. When the food arrives, Dean pops the top off his own beer, not touching Sam’s. The things Dean doesn’t do these days fill a whole non-existent movie reel in Sam’s head. Dean opening his beer for him. Dean tugging him by the sleeve on to the top of the Impala’s hood, both of them sitting so close that they’re pressed together from shoulder to knee. Dean making ridiculous, politically-incorrect jokes designed to have Sam rolling his eyes. 

‘All this because I want to go away to college?’ Sam had asked two nights ago, when Dean had booked separate motel rooms for them. They can hardly afford separate rooms. Dean had brushed him off, claiming he was planning on having company for the night. It shouldn’t have stung.

 

\--

 

‘You will be saved,’ the girl with the ash-blonde ponytail says, slipping a pamphlet into Sam’s burger-greasy hand before he’s finished wiping it. He’s stranded in the doorway of the diner, clean hand against the glass door to keep it from shutting in his face behind Dean.

‘We all will,’ she continues, smiling up at Sam with a tranquility that he’s only ever seen in believers, her words half-drowned by Dean’s impatient shout from the parking lot.

Sam blinks, fingers curled around the piece of paper, and the girl’s smile falters for a second. ‘Uh, thanks,’ he says, shoving it into his pocket. And then, just because there’s something in her eyes that makes him think for a moment that she knows loss just as much as he does, he adds: ‘Have a good day.’

Metallica is already blaring full-force when he gets to the car and gets in, the seat too hot in the midday sun, his fingers still in his pocket, spreading grease on to the pamphlet and the inner lining of his jacket. It needs a wash anyway.

 

\--

 

The thing is.

The thing is, Dean rarely acknowledges that they share a history of loss.

Like today, for instance. They’ve been driving since dawn, what should have a been a routine exorcism having taken half the night because they’re out of sync with each other again, their jagged edges tearing into each other instead of fitting together like they usually do. Sam’s learned not to let it bother him, the sudden distancing that sometimes happens between him and Dean. It’s bound to happen between two people who practically live out of the same car. But this time there’s an actual reason for it, and Sam can’t pretend that things will ever be the same again.

 

\--

 

Loud music isn’t always an indication that Dean’s in a mood. Sometimes he sings—he doesn’t believe he can carry a tune, but he can—energy and irrepressible humor in his voice, but never happiness. He’s not singing this time. Maybe he’ll only ever sing again when he’s alone in the car, maybe not even then. Something else breaks away from Sam’s heart and falls behind them on the highway like a broken road sign.

 

\--

 

That night, Sam crawls into his single king-sized bed in Sonora. Dean’s in the next room. The ancient air conditioner is barely cooling the room, and there’s a row of determined blank ants marching along the wall and disappearing behind the blinds covering the window. The air around him is musty, stifling.

Sam gets up and opens the door, stepping out into the night air without bothering with a jacket. The scent of heather hangs in the air, melding with a faint tinge of cigarette smoke. 

He turns around when he hears the scuff of boots down the corridor.

‘Dean?’

‘You still up?’

‘Where were you?’

Dean doesn’t look at him, fishing around in his pocket for the key to his room. ‘Salt and burn. Routine stuff.’

‘Without me?’

‘Wasn’t a two-man mission.’

Sam nods as if he understands, looking away from Dean to where the Impala’s shiny-black roof reflects the motel’s neon sign. 

He imagines Dean turning around instead of heading back into his room. ‘Hey,’ he’d say. ‘You wanna head out?’ And Sam would agree, just like that, because getting into the car with Dean and driving to some unknown destination was one of his favorite things to do. They’d drive and drive, past towns in which people with normal lives were safely in bed, and maybe around dawn they’d reach one of those lakes in the middle of nowhere and Sam would realize that he hadn’t even unpacked back at the motel, just kept his bag ready to be slung over his shoulder as though he’d known what Dean had in mind.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says to Dean’s closed door.

It’s barely nine yet, and Sam doesn’t want to go back in. He’s got an itch under his skin, and maybe if he went to Dean’s room and knocked on the door and asked to be let in, Dean would let him in and they’d drink beer and watch some late night B-grade movie on TV. Maybe they wouldn’t talk, but Dean would let Sam share his space because he’s never going to be able to shut Sam out completely, and Sam knows it. But he doesn’t knock, because he needs to get used to looking for fixes other than his brother.

He walks the half-mile into town and into the bar he’d noticed earlier in the day. 

 

\--

 

The moment he walks back into his room, he knows he’s not alone.

‘What’d you do, Sam?’ Dean asks. He’s sitting in the only chair, over by the window. ‘Get drunk? Fuck someone?’

Sam lets out a short laugh. ‘I can’t legally fuck anyone.’ He’s three weeks shy of his eighteenth birthday. He knows his breath smells of alcohol.

Dean shrugs, a one-shouldered gesture that reeks of disdain. ‘Haven’t let that stop you in the past.’

‘Fuck off, Dean.’ Sam lets himself fall on the bed, the pillow soft and worn against his cheek. Still half-awake, he hears the chair creak as Dean gets up. Then the door clicks shut behind Dean.

 

\--

 

Morning brings a tiny amount of regret, along with the hangover from hell. When Sam stumbles out of his room in his t-shirt and jeans, boots unlaced and clothes crammed into his backpack, Dean’s already in the car, its engine running, as though there were actually a chance that he’d leave Sam behind. The air vent rattles and Sam looks back for a moment at the spot where he knows their initials are carved into the floor, the car full of relics of a life they never really had.

The thing is, Sam’s looking forward to college. In his last semester of school he’d read a Betty Smith novel in which a boy and a girl get married too young and move to a university town where he goes to classes and she sits outside the classroom sometimes and listens to the lectures as though she’s absorbing the words that aren’t directed at her, her enthusiasm for learning so familiar to Sam that, yet again, he'd found a kindred soul in a fictional character who leapt off the pages off the book and personified him, understood him in a way his infuriating, impossible brother never will.

The thing is, it would be so easy for Sam to give up that love, if he only thought his staying behind would make the slightest shred of difference to Dean. But they’re leaving the past behind them with every mile that’s eaten up by the Impala’s tires, memories fading into forgetfulness that Sam doesn’t actually want. He learns then that it takes two to make a memory, that if Dean doesn’t want to remember that life they’ve never had, he’ll damned well make sure there’s no trace of it left for Sam to find. 

_Don’t do this_ , Sam wants to say. _I’m not leaving you. I need you to understand._ But he doesn’t say anything, and wonders if maybe they’re taking each other’s silence for indifference.

 

\--

 

Sometimes Sam wonders if he’ll ever be back on the same road. Maybe ten years down the line, he’ll drive down that road with someone else, and it won’t be the same. It might still have that gas station, that motel with the broken neon sign practically hanging off its frame, but it won’t be the same. 

In his last few weeks with his brother, he decides to start mapping their trips. He buys a cheap map from the gas station shop while Dean’s filling up the gas tank and stows the map in his bag, determined to only pull it out when Dean isn’t around, like it’s a secret that Dean shouldn’t know about.

When he steps out of the shop the Impala’s outside, shining in the sun as it always does. Sam scrapes his fingertips lightly over the rolled-up glass of the window, the thin transparent wall between his skin and the toy soldier wedged into the ashtray in the back. Relics of a life they never really had. All they’ve ever had is each other, and Sam’s damned if he’s going to lose Dean now, after everything. He slides his hand into his pocket and presses his fingernails against his palm, letting it hurt just enough.


End file.
